Music in the Third Reich

316 Pages·1994·30.211 MB·English

by  Erik Levi (auth.)

MUSIC IN THE THIRD REICH
Music in the
Third Reich
Erik Levi
Senior Lecturer in Music
Royal Holloway, University of London
~
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-0-333-64693-9 ISBN 978-1-349-24582-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24582-6
MUSIC IN THE THIRD REICH
Copyright © 1994 by Erik Levi
Reprint of the original edition 1994
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information, address:
St. Martin's Press, Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1994
Reprinted 1996
ISBN 978-0-312-10381-1(cloth)
ISBN 978-0-312-12948-4(paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levi, Erik.
Music in the Third Reich I Erik Levi.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-10381-1 (cloth).- ISBN 978-0-312-12948-4(pbk.)
1. Music-Germany-20th century-History and criticism.
2. National socialism and music. I. Title.
ML275.5.L49 1994
780'.943'09043---dc20 93-5860
CIP
Contents
List of Tables and Figures Vlll
Acknowledgements lX
Introduction Xl
1 Conservative Musical Reaction in the
Weimar Republic, 1919-33 1
Reactionary musical attitudes, 1919-23 3
The re-opening of Bayreuth and the
Zeitschrift fur Musik 5
The rise of National Socialism and its
influence upon musical life 8
2 Music and State Control 14
Towards the Gleichschaltung (Co-ordination)
of musical life: the struggle between
Goebbels and Rosenberg 15
Goebbels, the Reichsmusikkammer and the
Ministry of Propaganda, 1934-9 24
Obstacles to Goebbels's authority 34
Music and state control during the War 36
3 Anti-Semitism 39
The Removal of the Jews: 1933 and beyond 41
The Kulturbund deutscher Juden and music
in the Ghetto 49
Anti-Semitic musical propaganda 57
Redrawing the repertoire: the Aryanisation
of music 70
4 Entartete Musik: The War Against Modernism 82
The Nazi purge of modernist repertoire in
1933 85
The Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein
(ADMV): a test case 89
The Entartete Musik Exhibition 94
Internationalism 98
Atonality 102
v
vi Contents
Neue Sachlichkeit: Hindemith and other
Germans 107
Jazz 119
5 Technology Serves Music: Radio and
Recording during the Third Reich 124
The radio 126
Recording 139
6 Responding to the Market: Music Publishing
in the Third Reich 147
Politicised music publications 149
The suppression of Jewish music publishers 156
The pre-eminence of Schott 159
Successes of the period and its legacy 163
7 Confonnity or Challenge: The Opera House
in the Third Reich 166
Opera in the Weimar Republic, 1927-33 166
The Nazi take-over: from Preussischer
Theaterausschuss to Reichstheaterkammer 170
The Reichstheaterkammer; limitations of
bureaucracy and artistic policy in Dresden,
Frankfurt and Berlin 175
Perspectives of repertoire, 1933-45 182
An overall assessment of operatic repertoire
in the Third Reich 191
8 Continuity or Change: The Symphony
Orchestra and its Repertoire 195
The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 197
Orchestras in Dresden, Leipzig, Hamburg
and Munich 203
The Kampfbund Orchestras and the National
Socialist Reichs Symphony Orchestra 207
Orchestras in the occupied territories 210
A general note about repertoire 215
9 Rewriting Musical History: Music Literature
and the Musical Press 220
The racial argument 221
Music histories after 1933 223
Contents Vll
Musical biographies 226
The musical press, 1933--9 228
The musical press during the war 237
Notes and References 243
Glossary 265
Chronology 267
Bibliography 281
Index 286
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
6.1 Number of political music publications, 1929-38 150
7.1 Number of musicians contracted at German
theatres, 1932-8 181
7.2 The five most popular operatic composers,
1932-40 192
7.3 The most popular operas, 1932-3 and 1938-9 193
8.1 Number of twentieth-century composers
performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 216
8.2 The most performed composers of orchestral
musiC 217
8.3 Random sample of orchestral repertoire outside
Berlin 218
Figures
2.1 Hierarchical structure of the Reichs Chamber of
Culture from government to regional level 25
2.2 Initial structure of the Reichs Chamber of Music 27
Vlll
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank numerous people who have nurtured me in the
writing of this book. Amongst the various libraries who have
proved so helpful and obliging in answering all my queries, the
staff of the Wiener Library in London, in particular, deserve a
special mention for providing me with valuable archival and
press material. I would also like to thank Jeremy Upton and
Dr Christopher Grogan~ both librarians of the music depart
ment of Royal Holloway, University of London, who searched
for and located much material which is not easily accessible in
this country. Amongst those who took a personal interest in the
text of my book I must thank, first and foremost, Andrew
Bickley whose constructive criticisms have proved invaluable at
every stage. In the thorny question of translating some ex
tremely complicated German texts, I am most grateful to my
father, Felix Levi, and Dr Hans Heimler for their patience and
expertise. Finally, I must thank my wife Joanne and my children
Micaela and Francesca for putting up with so much in the
difficult birth of this book.
ERIK LEVI
IX
Introduction
The function of the arts in a repressive political system such as
the Third Reich has always exercised considerable fascination
amongst cultural historians. Yet since 1945, there has been
something of an imbalance in the levels of scrutiny afforded to
the different art forms during the Nazi era. In purely statistical
terms, there can be no doubt that most attention has been
drawn to the visual arts and architecture. For example, the
bibliography The Nazi Era. 1919-1945, edited by Helen Kehr
and Janet Langmaid (London, 1982), lists nearly twenty post
war books dealing with art history, and eight concerned with
architecture. Next to these areas, the role of the media, espe
cially film, has also elicited comprehensive and detailed exami
nation. In comparison, music seems to have attracted far less
exposure and, to date, only a handful of books in the German
language have been exclusively concerned with the subject.
These are Musik im dritten Reich ( 1962) by Joseph Wulf, Musik im
NS-Staat ( 1982) by Fred Prieberg, Musik und Musikpolitik im
faschistischenDeutschland (1984) edited by Hanns-Werner Heister
and Hans-Gunter Klein, and Entartete Musik (1988) edited by
Albrecht Diimling and Peter Girth.
Given Germany's undisputed historical pre-eminence in both
the performing and creative aspects of music, the paucity of
scholarly material on musical life in Nazi Germany appears to
be somewhat surprising. But there are perhaps special reasons
why, amongst all the arts, it is music that has remained relatively
neglected. One explanation must surely rest with the very ab
stract nature of music as an art form. This poses special difficul
ties for any historian who seeks to draw unambiguous parallels
between music and political ideology, difficulties which appear,
at least on the surface, to be far less problematical in the visual
arts or film. At the same time, it would be misleading to suggest
that connections cannot be drawn. No one would dispute that
socio-political factors have some bearing on the composition,
performance and reception of music in any period. But at
tempts at arriving at a precise definition of the political complex
ion of a particular piece of music, especially one which is di
vorced from a specified text or programme, still prove elusive.
XI